Compass
by sifuXANA
Summary: Michael Yew fell. Thalia ran. And the thinnest connection between them sends time spiraling in patterns nobody can place, in currents no one can calculate.
1. 00

_I've had this idea for a while now and finally started writing a story around it. I have to say, this is probably a really bad time to post a story since I have exams next week, but bear with me and I'll try to get some more chapters up later. (: Thanks for reading! _

_Completely disregards The Lost Hero, so no spoilers or anything.** Disclaimer:** I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians, or The Lost Hero for that matter._

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"They say life makes us backwards/Only you got to live it forwards" –Keane and K'Naan

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He was erased incompletely when the bridge broke.

She ran each time without understanding the scope.

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_I abstain from the trial and I'm ignoring the witness…_


	2. 10

_**Disclaimer**: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. _

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He's never been one for the abstract, the clever arrangement of words, and that's why he's so surprised when he awakens and nothing on the tip of his tongue makes any sense.

The sky is caught in a weird middle ground, not dark but not light either. It looks like the whole world has been stuck into a strange twilight zone. It looks like tornado weather, the hazy wash and the weird light coming through the trees and buildings. It looks like a disaster zone, loose strokes and heavy paint and nothing recognizable in the rubble.

Poetry clouds his head. He can't even seem to form a coherent thought. The hard ground swallows his limbs. A vague ache forms in his head and shakes through his whole body. The word earthquake runs through his consciousness but he disregards it. The concrete is cracked.

A bird.

A pigeon pecking crumbs. A startled pigeon ducking and weaving. It takes off.

Dimly he begins to hear sounds, like the continuation of something he'd cut off. Heavy thumps and maybe a couple of screams. Noises of commotion, but not the normal busy sounds of New York. Like the sounds of everyday distorted. Suddenly the clamor connects with the debris and something in his mind seems to click.

Something happened—many things happened—he fell.

Fog still warps the remaining memories in his head, but he sees flashes of things: gold eyes. Tremors. An arrow. Everything has a layer, a veil or a shield of some sort over it. He begins to close his eyes but resists. He should make sense of this.

He thinks he remembers who he is, hazily: a person of logic and wit, governed by whatever he chooses, by the forces he's loyal to. He went to some kind of boarding school away from home. His father was someone important, but he's having trouble recalling who. What, why, where, how. Nothing is distinct.

Slowly, he manages to uncurl his stiff body. Pain ricochets through one leg and he gasps—a sharp quick sound. He's thirsty, he realizes. There's thunder in his head. He stretches each arm, flexes the fingers. Two fingers won't move. He screws up his eyes in concentration.

It takes what seems like hours, but he finally stands. He tries not to put pressure on his right leg. Still, every so often another wave of pain hits it and he has to pause. The world swims—tilting at an angle, shifting like a snow globe until it's almost upside down and bubbles of water struggle to stay near the surface. But the longer he stays standing, things begin to right themselves.

He's standing on the pavement of a city in New York. That was the first thing he remembered. _New York_. His corner is entirely silent. Bits of wreckage line the sidewalk, though they are more like hunks than bits. In the distance people run frantically, while more fuzzy-looking people chase them or fall to the ground. It's a scene of utter confusion. Michael has no idea what's going on.

_Michael_.

Something's wrong. He fell into water.

He's gripping furiously onto the building beside him for support. The doorframe is inches from the tips of his fingers. Scrambling to maintain his balance, he stumbles bit by bit inside.

This must have been some sort of convenience store. The shine of plastic wrappings catches his eye, then the cool hum of a fridge turns his head. Sodas, chips, boxes of hair coloring. A greeting card. The space is tiny but clean, although the linoleum floor sends vibrations rocketing painfully through his leg.

_Michael_. _New York_.

Frantically he rummages through his pockets, for any clue to what's happening, to who he really is. He finds nothing but a round gold coin. He turns it carefully between his thumb and forefinger, and the fluorescent lights bounce off of its surface. Instantly, the little man who works his brain says, rainbow.

"Rainbow?" he says incredulously. His voice sounds foreign to him. "Wow, thanks for all the help, little man." The little man mutters a protest. Great, now he's really going crazy.

The hum from the row of fridges grows incessant, overwhelming. Spontaneously, he begins limping down one of the aisles, wondering if that little man will reveal something else to him, give him another clue. But all he gets is silence.

In his distraction Michael stumbles into one of the shelves and his arm burns furiously. There's a half-healed cut that slices across his forearm. He hadn't even noticed, and as he stares at it, trying to remember how he got it, something unnatural tingles across his hand and travels up his arm.

Laboriously, he moves back outside. Gas pumps, some mangled or with suspicious-looking giant teeth marks dug into them, face him stoically. To the side is a beat up car wash, complete with the wreckage of what was probably once a black SUV. Motor parts trail along the ground like the guts of some slain animal. It's hard not to be morbid in the midst of all these ruins.

His head still pounds. He's starting to remember just a few hints of those last moments, the moments before he fell. The sound of foundations splintering. A chasm opening up, a stray arrow. But he fell into water, so how did he end up here?

He clenches his fingers that still move so hard he's surprised they don't snap. He is so close, so close to figuring out everything, but it doesn't want to happen.

A cable…the shaking so intense as the ground fragmented beneath him…

And there was a decision…

Michael scans the fighting in the distance and his eyes latch onto a young boy as he stabs a sword (_a sword?_) into a larger figure with a wavering form. The figure's already fuzzy body begins to shiver, and then it explodes into a hurricane of dust. Blinking fast, he holds a hand above his eyes. That shouldn't make sense, and yet somehow, it does.

Because he has the strangest feeling he's done that before.

The commotion in the distance is becoming clearer, as all the outlines begin to fall into place.


	3. 09

_**Disclaimer**: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians._

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This could be the end.

Manhattan has turned into some kind of tribal war zone. All around are demigods hacking and chopping, dancing and dodging, carving and killing. An army of monsters slowly explodes, one by one. But all she seems to see are the demigods who've been wounded. And who've been killed.

She's taking down monsters like they're made of paper cards, slicing them up faster than anyone with her wicked hunting knives. As soon as one disintegrates into dust she's on to another, quick as lightning. But she can tell it's not going to last.

The hunters are all holding their own, driving silver arrow after silver arrow into the monster's hides, but slowly, the enemy is overtaking. She's beginning to feel crushed by all these masses, but she forces herself to keep killing, to stand straight. They are all looking to her. She's the one who held her ground against those monsters so many years ago and that's who she is and that's who she's going to be. Even if she's grown since then.

An ice giant lumbers her way and she leaps out of range, notching her last fire arrow. She strikes the giant right between the eyes. His forehead begins to melt, but the shot didn't have enough force. Pulling the arrow out, he throws it in her direction, but she just catches it and hefts her bow again. That's when the idiot stomps over and smashes the bow with one of his enormous hands.

He growls at her and she growls right back, drawing her hunting knives and advancing on him. The giant swipes at her again, but she takes the opportunity to jump onto his outstretched arm. She drives the knives in and she climbs up. It's almost like a dance: she traces the outline of a sculpture onto his icy body as he roars, swinging his limbs in time to her movements. It doesn't take long before he's reduced to an pile of ice shards.

There's a moment of distraction as her feet hit the ground and a demon takes advantage of this. It slashes at her face before she can even turn around and she feels the hot spread of blood from her cheek. Being herself, she charges the demon immediately, a string of obscenities rebounding through the air.

She can't even remember how long this has been going on. If she stops to think about this, to think about everyone they've lost and how little ground they've gained, all she would get is a knife through the heart, literally. So she's caught up in the mindless pulsing of war, the rhythm pounding through her bones. It doesn't get easier. But as long as she can move with the electricity arcing through her knives and her feet on fire, she thinks she can keep this up. Until she falls.

In the frenzy she fights beside anyone and everyone: Hunters, old friends, even enemies, the people she used to get into fights with back at camp. Sometimes through all the confusion it's hard to tell which demigods belong to her side and which don't. She tries to avoid them altogether. Every time she sees an enemy demigod, it just reminds her how close she came to fighting for Kronos, and at the same time how far.

Percy is there too, briefly, before he has to go off and be heroic somewhere else. Whenever he leaves her mind lurches painfully because she doesn't think he knows how important he really is, how much everyone is depending on him. Like she would ever tell that Seaweed Brain, anyway. Annabeth fights next to her too and she wonders, if they win this war, will those two have their chance? She knows how important that is, how it's impossible to live in a world without love.

It doesn't sound like a philosophy Artemis would support, but the thing about Thalia is that nobody can change what she believes in. _Almost_ nobody. (Because she believed in Luke, after all.)

She swallows, hard. She must have stopped because one of her Hunters looks up from skewering a _dracanae_ and touches the back of her hand lightly. Warmth travels through her veins like electricity and she holds her head higher, whips around with her knives.

As she's killing yet another monster, one of the campers—a son of Hermes, she thinks, he has that family resemblance—yells to her and points to something in the distance. She can't understand what he's saying and she gets a cut on the arm for her inattention. He's still yelling at her, but she can't make out what he says until she sees it for herself.

The flood of monsters and demons suddenly increases dramatically, and there's a reason why. For a moment, the fighting seems to freeze. Kro_(Luke)_nos is marching forward on his beast, scythe held high, and all around him the enemy army rallies. Her breathing slows in her chest and she remembers that he can do this now. Time is his power and he can mold it like clay. Maybe he can even…rewind it.

To what everything used to be.

To make them all relive every moment, analyzing compulsively just where it went wrong.

Wondering what they missed.

There's a flash of light so bright she wonders if it actually exists, and then she's lost in the commotion.

Her bow is snapped, her quiver empty. She tries her best to revive the Olympian army by carving up a monster or two with her hunting knives, but her side is overwhelmed. She's lost in a tidal wave of war and it's here that she wonders if she really is filling herself back in again, regaining what she's missing, because here it feels like she just keeps disappearing. She is swept up into the rage and the consumed young man with the golden eyes and the demigods who wear the sign of the Titans but she's driven back and she knows. She sprints straight for the elevator to warn the person who's supposed to be there at the very final second and she runs faster just to keep herself focused but she knows.

She knows the end. And she knows what will happen. And a vision of a shaking woman, glowing green, _his fate_, _my son_, _not his fate_, and the future and she doesn't know how she got into this mess, how any of them got into this mess. She marches into the throne room, sparks flickering from her hands—she doesn't notice how angry she's gotten—"You've got to get down there," she says, trying not to snap at him. "The enemy is advancing. And Kronos is leading them."


	4. 11

_**Disclaimer**: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. And that goes for every chapter of this story._

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Images and half-formed sentences are floating through Michael's consciousness, trying to connect. He's frozen. Everything is swirling around him.

He doesn't quite understand the truth but now he is thinking it would be easier just to let go. To start over. The battle on the horizon threatens to upset this.

Suddenly he hears a roar, a noise of rage and power, but mingled with heartbreak—a terrifying but pitiful noise. Half of him wants to run from it but the other half is curious. He just wants to know what's going on.

But he doesn't approach.

He has to get out of here somehow. A taxi? A bus? He spots a cab with its hood caved in and a stack of wheels that probably came from a bus—that idiotic children's rhyme collides with the mess in his head _the wheels on the bus go round and round_ and he tries to force it out.

He grunts and heads for the wrecked taxi. Amazingly, the keys are still in the ignition. Michael buckles himself in, holds the brake with his left foot, and hopes that he still remembers how to drive. Not that he can remember if he ever learned in the first place.

The brakes squeal and the engine makes pathetic whining and coughing sounds, but the car still runs. However, he soon realizes that he can barely see over the steering wheel. Is he that short? He reaches up to crank down the rearview mirror, and then he gets a flash of his face. Blue-gray eyes. Bruise spreading across one cheek. A little pointy nose—he remembers now that he used to hate it. He recognizes his own face.

As he drives, a little jerkily with his stiff body and his limited view, he keeps his eyes on the road signs and tries not to think too much. He drives this way for miles and miles, out of Manhattan and into some other, smaller part of New York that he doesn't recognize. Here the memories don't reach him. Michael isn't sure at all now, if he wants to know who he is. The sound he heard, the roar, the battle: the truth is beginning to frighten him. He gets the sense that it's so much bigger than him. Maybe he should just be here, be anonymous, be alone.

The car runs out of gas in a town called Athens. He searches for a gas station, but he doesn't have money or credit cards or anything but this strange golden coin so he decides he'll stay here. It's remote enough, after all, that his past most likely won't find him.

He spots a Motel 6, a McDonald's, a couple diners and a rundown mall on the main road. If he's going to stay here, he'll need to get a job somewhere. He starts at one of the diners. It's called Athens Diner (what an original name, he thinks critically) and it's decorated with old records and a lot of red paint. When he asks at the counter, the young blond waitress nods and hands him an application that takes Michael nearly an hour to fill out. The letters swim around in his head, forming words he knows can't be right. The waitress keeps staring at him like she can't believe it's taking him so long.

It doesn't help that he can't remember anything about himself. Most of the information he makes up: Michael Donelson, age 19, city of birth Albany, NY. For all he knows it could be true.

The application requires an address, so he jots down a room number in the Motel 6, figuring he can sleep in the car until he gets his first paycheck. He's just handed back the application when another waitress bursts in.

She looks the almost-empty diner over and her eyes stop on Michael. "Oh, it must be you," she says, her tone decidedly unfriendly. "Someone from the motel's on the phone for you." She beckons at him and he follows her into the back. There's an old rotary phone on the wall. He picks up the receiver from where it's resting on the table. A vague shock runs through his hand and he almost drops it.

"Hello?" he says, once again not recognizing his own voice.

"Mr. Michael Yew?" The man at the other end drawls. "Your room is ready. Come on over and pick up your key."

_Yew_. _Michael Yew._ He shakes his head—no more discoveries. But this man, this room, his name, nothing is making sense. He's silent for a minute without realizing it.

"Mr. Yew?" The voice asks impatiently.

He clears his throat. "Uh, yes, sir. Thanks. But, uh—the name's Michael Donelson."

"Mr. Donelson," the man corrects himself, and hangs up.

He puts the receiver back on the wall and turns to thank the waitress, but she's gone. He walks back into the main room and the blond waitress is jotting down an order for an old couple in one of the booths. She doesn't see him, so he leaves.

In the Motel 6 he limps up to the counter and tells the man his name. With the same New York drawl the man welcomes him and hands him a room key, flat and even thinner than a credit card. He doesn't even ask for identification.

The motel room is tiny but he doesn't really care. He's exhausted. His head still pounds as if someone's consistently beating him over the head with a frying pan. And even though the pain in his leg has dulled, if he walks on it the wrong way fire shoots through it. He flops onto the bed and switches on the TV.

The motel doesn't even have cable, so it doesn't take long for him to flip through all the channels. A children's cartoon show (He does consider watching it—briefly), a comedy routine, some government-sponsored thing, and two news channels. He finally lands on CNN. The pretty reporter has a dramatically terrified look on her face, something she probably learned in acting class, as she stands in front of a video of what looks like a blown up version of the tornado in The Wizard of Oz. "Storm systems continuing to move east," she announces."A trail of wreckage across seven states has been left in its wake. By our current predictions, the storm is moving across New York and will reach Manhattan by—"

Her voice fades out as Michael stares at the TV. A tingly feeling spreads through his torso and down his legs, as though his whole body is falling asleep. He keeps staring until the images blur out. Something ancient and bizarre and _familiar_ is calling out to him, and he knows it's not the cute reporter. And he's already made up his mind not to remember. But nobody wants to leave him alone.


	5. 06

_**Disclaimer**: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians._

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The attic is musty and unpleasant. Okay, unpleasant isn't really a strong enough word. It's creepy enough to make Thalia want to turn back, and that's saying something.

She spots the box immediately. It's labeled in a scrawling, messy hand, with just her first name: _Thalia_. She starts to drag it downstairs. But she thinks of Annabeth playing pinochle with Chiron, and Mr. D drinking loudly from his Diet Coke can. All these people she doesn't want to face. So she sits down on the dusty, ancient-looking floor of the attic.

When she opens the box, a cloud of dust flies into the air. It's as if she were one of the exhibits stacked around her: a remote control that's beginning to rust, a twisted sword, Aphrodite's silk scarf. Something important is missing from her, and the longer she waits the further it seems to slip. Secretly, she hopes she'll find it here, that like the ancient fuzzy dice on display it's been framed, captured, waiting.

Thalia exhales, slow, and looks into the box. On the very top are her clothes. "Thank the gods," she says quietly, her voice subdued by all the dust. She still fits into her old clothes, so she must have hardly grown, but it's apparent that she's aged. She just doesn't know how much. She goes through them carefully—there is her favorite pair of jeans. There is her heavy winter coat—she used to hate it, but now she handles it almost lovingly, as a relic of her former life. There is her Green Day shirt. Under her clothes is her sleeping bag, rolled up tidily. Underneath that…

Her old watch lies precariously in a small pile. When she picks it up, something spiky with electricity runs up her hand like a message or a shiver, and for a second it's like she's stuck in a hollow of time, looking at the past and the future and anything but where she is now. She drops the watch.

It was her mother's watch. It's cracked, maybe from her last battle, but it probably still fits. Thalia doesn't know why she took it. She doesn't know why she still has it or why she's even here or why or if her mother ever thought about her in all the years she was gone or where her mother is or—

She holds in the tears that threaten suddenly. In the box she sees a few supplies—ancient granola bars, some toothpaste that looks like cement, an empty water bottle. They threw nothing of hers away. Her black eyeliner, about five dollars in cash. A bent map of North Carolina. A leather case of CDs, but no CD player. A pencil snapped in half. All of these relics—they would mean nothing to anyone, but even the three pennies she finds electrify her with some sort of strange wistfulness. A necklace of crunchy brown daisies makes her heart stop. A folded scrap of lined paper crushes the air from her chest.

So quickly, she's exhausted.

The bottom of the box is empty. What did she expect? Her magical items, her silver bracelet and mace canister, were on her when she woke up. The only other thing that's missing is inexplicable.

Thalia sits back on her heels, looking at all the contents strewn around her. They're arranged like points on a compass, each in a different direction, trying to guide her somewhere. But she doesn't know how to listen.

It's gotten dark outside. In the murky calm of the attic, she feels a hum, a muted steady sound of something supernatural. _The Oracle?_ It swims soothingly around her. Slowly, her eyes begin to close.

_The Oracle_? _The truth_. She's been swallowed by time, trapped but not completely. A sloppy job. Caught in a loop that strayed just slightly every time. It's frustrating, but she doesn't even want to rewind. Just—erase everything. And completely this time.

Half asleep, this is easier to understand.

She curls into the middle of all her old things, thinking maybe the magnetic pull will lead her subconsciously. She cups her watch between her two hands without touching it: the center of all things. But she doesn't sleep. Noises filter through the floorboards from downstairs and she stays quiet, listens.

When she sits up all the refuse around her is useless. She gathers it all up into the box, carelessly, and marches downstairs. Chiron is leaning back in his wheelchair with his hands behind his head. Annabeth looks up; beside her is an abandoned Diet Coke can. All Thalia can think about it how if Grover was there, he'd be munching on it.

She hitches the box up higher on her hip. "I don't want any of it," she says. Her voice comes out rough.

"Thalia—" Annabeth says.

She just shakes her head. Every little item contained within her box is full of ghosts, omens, babble about fate and destiny and things she can't control. She knows if she burns it all she'll be losing part of herself: it's hidden in there, melting and melding, she _knows_ this. But Thalia would rather be lost than burdened. Her old things can circulate on their own cycles, separate from her—she wants the distinction. She'll put the box out by the road, she'll 'borrow' that infinity credit card Percy keeps bragging about, and she'll go shopping. Better to destroy it all now, fill herself back in later, change. It'll be worth what she feels now, in the end.

Chiron is watching her from his side of the table. Casually, silently, he watches her as if he's rummaging in his head to find something to say. It would be something repeated. It would be something he'd said to hundreds of other heroes, and Thalia leaves before his words can make her feel any more insignificant than his silence. Heading through the woods, she kicks thick weeds out of the way. She's trying not to stumble.

Her mother's old watch ticks quietly in her pocket.

She couldn't throw it away. She couldn't completely do what she said she would. Because then she'd lose even more of herself than she has already.

What she seeks is in there, in the tingle across her hand, something from the past, something from the future.

Is this what they call a revelation?

But she doesn't believe in ghosts.


	6. 12

_**Disclaimer**: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians._

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Michael swears he's seeing more in the picture than he's supposed to.

He shuts off the TV and just lies back in the bed, counting the dots in the ceiling until his eyes cross. Not surprisingly, this doesn't calm him down. He starts pacing around the room obsessively, catches his reflection in one of the mirrors, and immediately heads to the bathroom to wash his face. He hasn't stopped to think about how he's going to eat tonight.

Unless whoever got him this motel room decides to chip in for dinner…Outside, the sunlight dims until it's just a bright orange streak across the sky. It makes Michael's heart race like it's just another example of this shroud of mystery that covers him. _Shroud_…he decides to go downstairs to find some food.

There's a different man at the desk, a thin black man with an odd-looking goatee. When Michael asks about dinner options, the man gets out a map of the town—just slightly bigger than a note card—and circles a bunch of blue squares with his ballpoint pen. The cheapest thing he could get is from the McDonald's dollar menu. It occurs to Michael that he might be able to get an advance at Athens Diner, even though he doesn't work there yet, but as soon as he's outside he unfolds the map and a twenty dollar bill falls out.

Well, all right.

He picks a steakhouse about a block from the motel. Small and poorly lit, it's not the kind of place he'd normally go to, but these aren't exactly normal circumstances. Michael almost changes his mind when he sees the fake moose head mounted on the wall. Once he sees the barbecue ribs on the menu, though, he's sold. He loves barbecue. It weirds him out a little that he can remember these things and not his own last name, but he's just going to go with it.

For a steakhouse, it's pretty cheap. Michael finishes the ribs in about two minutes and gets three free refills of Diet Pepsi. He walks back to the motel with a full stomach, feeling a lot better. His leg doesn't even hurt him that much anymore.

His plans are pretty much just to pass out on the bed and most definitely avoid the TV. And that's what he does.

In the morning he feels hazy again and a stream of panic floods him—his thoughts race and it's like his battle instinct is kicking in or something. _Battle instinct_? It takes him a minute of wrestling frantically with the sheets to remember where he is, why he's here.

Is this progress? Does this count?

Out of sheer boredom (and maybe a few other things he wouldn't admit to), he walks over to the diner instead of waiting for a call. The waitress at the counter, a woman with gray-streaked hair, looks surprised to see him, but goes into the back to talk to the manager. He's hired, she says, with a look of remote surprise. Michael just shrugs.

He waits on customers for three hours, taking down orders, describing the soup of the day, laying plates down neatly beside their proper owners. The diner is short on waiters, but they have plenty of busboys. Michael guesses he was lucky. But his motions are mechanical and he has a headache and that's all he can think about.

The TV in the diner is turned to a news channel; CNN, Michael thinks. The reporters are addressing some natural disaster a million miles away when they abruptly start talking about a storm system that swept through New York yesterday. Before Michael can tune it out, he catches a picture of a statue of Frederick Douglass (he used to pass it every day on his way to school—no. _enough_) being strangled by another statue he doesn't recognize. It's totally bizarre but something about it is oddly familiar. He tries to concentrate on serving the customers, but the image is printed in his mind and the words are like a voiceover drowning out his thoughts. By the time his shift is over, he's exhausted.

As he's walking back to his motel, something unusual catches his eye. It shimmers, sleek and obnoxiously shiny, ironically placed in the middle of the road.

It's a lyre.

Michael closes his eyes and opens them again, but it's still there, calling out to him. _Lyre_. He shakes his head. _Lyre_. _Music_—

Even this place isn't far enough. His head begins to swim again, like all his locked-up memories are swirling through. The moon outside is blazing. He turns quickly, the lyre's shining image burned into his eyes, and runs to the car. His hands shaking, he turns the ignition. At least something is reliable—well, semi-reliable.

Or not. Michael forgot the car was out of gas. He digs in his pocket for the three dollars that remain from the 20 the clerk slipped him. It will have to do.

About one gallon later, he turns onto the interstate. Scenery flies by, soon replaced with the characteristic gray buildings of New York. He should just get out of the state. Go somewhere totally new and hope for more motels that give him free rooms.

Who is he kidding, really?

Is this luck or what is it?

It occurs to him, briefly, that he can't run forever. That he's only known one person who managed to run, not that well, it won't end well. His eyes cross as he stares at the dashboard, watching the tick of needles zooming toward the empty mark.

Needless to say, the gas refill doesn't last long, and Michael stops in a tiny town he doesn't know the name of. He missed the sign when he turned in. At this hour it's practically deserted—a ghost town, but he doesn't believe in ghosts.

He thinks of finding somewhere to stay for the night, or somewhere to get a job, but he's too tired. He just parks the car on the shoulder of the road in a more deserted spot, curls up, and goes to sleep. His dreams are a confusing swirl of things he swears he's never seen before, and he's more confused and tired when he wakes up, at first incomprehensibly, in the middle of the night.


	7. 02

It's the fourth day and she's wandering through the city again. The money she stole from her mother's wallet took her all the way to Illinois on the train. For a day and a half, she stared out the window and tried to form plans in her head. She snuck into the first class section and ordered the most expensive meals on the menu, things her mom would never have let her eat, things like crab cakes and remoulade or jasmine rice with bok choy. She even tried to swipe some businessman's BlackBerry out of sheer boredom, but he saw her and she had to sprint back to the coach before they kicked her off the train.

Now Thalia roams absently. She's free, she should be unbelievably happy, but she's not sure what to feel—the initial excitement is wearing off. The tall gray spires of Chicago just fill her with the unsettling sense of how small she is. Avoiding the waterfront, Thalia just feels like she's pacing out the same stretch of land, circling through the heart of the city over and over again. She almost wants someone by her side. Almost. Being alone is better, for now, than the silent wreckage of glass, the different kind of alone Thalia used to be.

With the last twenty dollar bill clutched in her hand (only now does it feel weird, holding someone else's money), Thalia walks into a diner advertising "Chicago's best burgers". She decides she'll treat herself to a cheeseburger while she can. It's taken this long for her to realize that her resources are finite. She's impulsive, rash, not someone to plan ahead, and it's really because of this that she's ended up with a backpack full of CDs and someone else's twenty dollars. Thalia is always getting stuck in these situations. This is just like the time she punched Tommy Dearborn in the face without thinking and the inevitable twentieth note was sent home to her mother: not that her mother really cared, but that meant it was time for the fourth parent-teacher conference. Conferences were something Thalia generally tried to avoid, as they always ended in some kind of—she shakes her head. There's no use in going backwards.

The cheeseburger is delicious. She relishes every bite, remembering that it cost her about five dollars, but in the end orders a second. In her head she's been reasoning: she's already spent this much money. She might as well live in her own definition of luxury while she has the chance. Cheeseburgers are a rare treat for Thalia. Her mom, being an actress, never brought home anything fried.

Thalia closes her eyes as she chews, and all kinds of things swim through, like imprints of dreams she's never had. When they blur into a solitary color, she opens her eyes again. A waiter is blocking out the light. He's tall and dressed in black, the check in his hand, giving Thalia a strange look. She pays the bill hurriedly and ducks out into the street.

She wonders if there's been a missing person's report filed yet. Or if she's just being paranoid.

The light fades quickly, bouncing painfully off the glass buildings, and though the lights come out in the dark the city still feels hopelessly empty. As the hours go by the few people who are out start looking sketchy. Thalia grits her teeth (there's no way she's backing down now) and finds her safe place, the little corner behind the Chinese restaurant dumpsters. In her sleeping bag she sleeps, though it feels more like waiting.

The stars come out hesitantly, faintly. Thalia thinks she's always wanted to go to a place where she can see the stars. They feel close to her somehow, but she knows she's a city girl, surrounded but _free_. A quandary, a dilemma, a quagmire. Her vocabulary flashcards come back to haunt her.

She spends half a day in Chicago before deciding to spend the remains of the money she's wasted. French fries or gummy worms, bananas or beef jerky? The food can't really satisfy her. She finds herself standing in front of the train station, staring at the ads plastered on the walls. What Thalia really wants is to move. She's got to keep moving.

Folding the bills between her fingers, she asks the man at the counter how far it will take her. He furrows his eyebrows. "That'll take you as far as Elgin," he says.

Thalia has no idea what this means but tries not to act ignorant. "Are there any trains that could take me out of state?" The paper money feels raw and crinkly. Isn't it obvious that it doesn't belong to her?

"No, this is an in-state line," he replies stiffly. He doesn't know what to make of her.

Suddenly, she's so sick of Illinois. Elgin, Chicago, all of it. "Is it a big city?" she says tiredly.

He looks almost amused. "If you're looking for a big city near there, I'd suggest Rockford. But you don't have quite enough cash to get you there." Twirling a pencil in his left hand, he smiles down at her in a way that suggests their conversation is over unless she wants to buy a ticket.

Frustrated, Thalia walks out into the crowd of people all waiting for their trains, for people to get off of them, for someone to call, waiting, waiting, waiting. The stars or the city lights? In the daytime this decision is much less difficult. She makes a face. She should have maybe saved up while she was at home, instead of her own vengeance. Thalia used to collect glass bottles for some coins that she could spend on herself: the one thing there was always enough of in the apartment was glass bottles. She isn't good at stealing. She's fast, she runs fast, she runs every time. But she's never been stealthy.

"All right, here goes," she grumbles under her breath.

The crowd is surprisingly unrelenting. The first few people Thalia tries don't even stop to look at her. _The sparks flickering off her body, the sky turning darker_. One woman hurries her children away, gripping their hands tightly. _She must have seen it. She must have. Because if she hadn't she would have yelled, defended him, called them all liars_. Another woman, an older one, apologizes profusely but Thalia thinks she's lying. _This is just the backlash, coming to haunt her_. It begins to feel like the smallest difference and she isn't sure anymore why she didn't just buy the ticket.

Finally a young man stops and looks her over. He's blond, just slightly scruffy, maybe in his twenties, his eyes as startlingly blue as hers. He digs in his pocket and Thalia waits expectantly, unable to control her small slow smile.

He offers up the money and her fingers make contact.

She feels a shiver, a ghost touch like gossamer brushing against her hand. Something supernatural arcs through her body until she's electrified, shaking, frightened and reassured at the same time.

He's gone.

_Once a boy will touch her hand so lightly and it will feel like that. And she will try to force a connection. But it's something of hers and it always has been and the time will spin dizzyingly away. _

Thalia buys the ticket, boards the train.

Always running.


	8. 13

_**jrizawps**: Thanks for the review! Sorry, I didn't mean to make it confusing. She was asking for money so she could buy the more expensive train ticket._

_**Disclaimer**: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians._

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At first, all he sees is a dark interior of metal and worn leather, and he panics. Then the wash of moonlight filters through the dashboard, and he remembers to breathe. But something is still off. It takes him a moment of adjustment to realize that someone is tapping on the car door.

He's a bit rattled by this but he tries not to let it show. The face outside looks vaguely like his, though he can't tell in the shadows. Something—maybe the surreal tint of the night—makes him open the door.

The man climbs in and sits in the passenger seat like he owns the car. His expression is serious, but the crinkles around his eyes tell Michael it isn't usually this way.

"Michael," the man says. "I've been trying to guide you back. But I guess you're more stubborn than I gave you credit for."

Michael is surprised but tries to disguise it. "Who are you?" he asks crossly. When he scowls, it feels right.

The man doesn't say anything, just regards him with that face that's beginning to look more and more familiar. Something should have connected by now, some fragmented link in Michael's brain, but he's out of practice. The way the man is looking at him makes images fly through his mind until a vague suspicion finally clicks.

Outside, everything looks as bizarre as the scene unfolding in the car's interior.

"It was you," Michael accuses. "You put the lyre there. You—" he stops. His frustration is beginning to boil over. "Why won't you leave me alone? I don't want to go back!"

The man's expression is grim, almost regretful. It's not a look that suits him. "I can't," he says gently. "Your friends need you, Michael. _We_ need you."

"We?" Michael asks suspiciously. He's beginning to see something more clearly, but he's not sure yet, and it startles him. "What would you need with me, anyway?"

The man sighs. "Michael, you may be—" he clears his throat— "the, um, shortest of my offspring, but you fought bravely against the Titans. You're a hero, and believe me, I won't say it again, but we need heroes. Even if we won't admit it, which, you know, we won't. The last thing we need is to lose another hero. We've lost more than enough heroes the past few days." He pauses. "I mean, it's just common sense to lose a few every now and then, but even Hades thinks we've gone a little overboard on the casualty rates. It's clogging up his entrance lines."

Michael shakes his head. This is too much—this flood of words, emotions, he doesn't know what. "_Stop_," he says. It's coming back, just bits and pieces, dirt and driftwood that hold the truth, and it's already too much for him.

"I'm sorry," the god says, and it sounds genuine. "I know what a burden being a half-blood is. But I couldn't just let you forget. We need you, Michael."

Michael just stares straight ahead. It feels like everything is rushing past him, the trees and buildings snapping and blurring like in a sci-fi movie. He's still fighting to deny it.

"Glad I caught up with you. You're pretty decent at hiding, you know, traveling. Reminds me of a certain brother of mine."

Michael doesn't respond. How can he? It's like playing a video of every single one of his memories, expecting him to absorb it like a sponge soaking up the Atlantic Ocean. He shakes his head again as if that can make it all stop.

The god sighs, again. "Look in your pocket," he suggests, but it sounds more like sage advice. Outside the air seems heavier, more real than inside the car. "Goodnight, Michael. Get some sleep." Bizarrely, he grins. "I sense that you're going to have a busy day tomorrow! I might even get to compose some haikus!" He winks and the car door slams. Michael just stares at the dissipating figure outside until his head swims and he drifts back to sleep.

When he wakes up in the early morning, his mind is still ringing. The unfamiliar road signs outside give him the feeling that his car was carried away by a tornado overnight and set down in the middle of a road somewhere, a scenario something like _The Wizard of Oz_. The memory comes back to him swiftly, so like a faded handprint that he wonders if it really was a dream. It comes with so much gravity that he leans back in his seat for the longest time, trying to process, trying to thaw. The motions do not come back easily to his limbs.

Just his luck that he couldn't be erased the right way. That he couldn't wake up without everything he'd left behind. That something had to remain with him, unwanted residue, seeming meaningless but meaning everything.

_Look in your pocket_.

The sun, higher in the sky by now, beams directly into Michael's left eye. He squints. Then he opens the door, stands up, gets out of the car.

He's parked, ironically, in front of a dingy gas station complete with a car wash. (The gas pumps remind him inexplicably of one he saw in New York, sabotaged by imprints of giant teeth.) The small convenience store is plastered with fliers for someone's missing cat. On the ground near Michael's feet, a puddle of oil makes rainbow swirls against the concrete.

A few inches away lies a broken bottle, its shards splayed and connected like an excavated skeleton.

"Really, really subtle," Michael mumbles, nudging a piece with his toe. The glass catches the sunlight and glints. He's stalling. He knows it. But it's come down to this, right here. It's remarkable how, subconsciously, he never wanted the life he only now remembers having. But there's also an aspect of it that he's drawn to, when his memory holds. He nudges the same piece of glass again, separating it from the other shards, collapsing the bottle's remains.

_Look in your pocket_.

The second his fingers make contact, something reacts, an equation that hadn't been there before. A sensation like a ghost, traveling through all of him like hot fiery liquid. This is the right time, he thinks, tentative, reluctant, but accepting. He draws out the drachma, his hand still shivering even as the feeling fades.

In his other hand, light filters through the section of glass, throwing out a rainbow, splayed like a gymnast doing the splits.

_Gods Kronos barbecue strawberry fields armor Hermes war Olympus 500th floor Dionysus cabin camp sword Apollo shield pegasus bridge gold arrow fall_...

Michael swallows. In front of him the rainbow glints, full of promise at a price. It beckons at him. His fingers clutch the coin so hard he thinks he will snap it, but he reaches out and tosses it through the rainbow.

The words don't stick in his throat this time. It's amazing, how he knows who he needs to see. A face appears, mistily, the expression changing rapidly when he sees Michael. It's hard to read the emotions.

(Some things stay constant as we hurtle back through the years. And forward, changing our minds at every turn, the fact that we have never, completely, lost.)

He feels anything but confident, and yet he knows it's the right choice when he says, "I think it's time I came home."


	9. 20

The last few weeks have been the most hectic of my life, and believe me, that's saying something. Between the construction projects and the funerals, tending the wounded and finding room for new campers, it's been exhausting. The cabins are almost done now. I worked on Eris' cabin for a few days, which was not the most pleasant experience since Eris is the goddess of strife and discord. We finished it yesterday and since then I've been avoiding it like, well, like anyone would avoid strife and discord.

Grover and the remaining satyrs took off after the last funeral, to find new half-bloods and bring them back to camp. I actually got to know Grover better once the war was over. We hang out sometimes. I officially met him in the infirmary, but I was there on Olympus when he was a Lord of the Wild. He's pretty cool, for a kid who's part goat. And now everywhere he goes he has dryads and naiads trailing after him. I'd give anything to have pretty girls trailing behind me everywhere I go, but unfortunately, Grover's not sharing.

I'm walking to the Big House to talk to Chiron (a kid from the Hecate cabin just cursed an Aphrodite girl, _again_) when I'm ambushed by a completely insane half blood daughter of Zeus. She's running like crazy and basically sideswipes me. "Hey," she gasps, all out of breath, and tries to convince me to give her a tour of the arts and crafts area while she keeps looking over her shoulder like someone's following her.

I really don't know Thalia all that well. I mean, I've heard stories about her like every half-blood has, and we struck up a kind of awkward impromptu conversation once when the two campers we were sitting next to at the campfire started making out with each other. But I don't know that much about her, except that she's kind of a risky friend to have, considering that she's insulted or punched at least one kid from every cabin in the week or so she's been around. I figure that must be some kind of record.

"What did you do this time?" I grumble, mostly to myself, but I go along with it. That's my policy, at least usually.

Thalia says "Thanks", ignoring my last question. She's a runaway, like me, like half the campers here. She once pushed Kronos off a cliff (except he was just a kid called Luke back then). She broke her leg when a statue of Hera fell on her and somehow persuaded Apollo to heal it. She still has a cell phone from the Reagan era, but I think that's just a rumor Percy started.

We lapse into a self-conscious silence: Thalia looks for dirt under her nails and I run my tongue over my teeth to make sure I don't have some spinach or something in there. I thought Thalia was a quiet girl, until I actually met her. Still she has that sort of quietness underneath.

We somehow start talking randomly about dinner a couple nights ago when a son of Hypnos ran into camp, jumped onto the Hermes table, and fell asleep right in the Stoll brothers' barbecue. I'm laughing at something Thalia's just said when I see Michael Yew walking in our direction, a bow and quiver slung over his back.

It's been a week and a half since we found Michael—actually, Michael found us—and he's already back to his regular 4'6" cocky self. We still don't know exactly what happened to him (why he's alive, but nobody says that), and when he told his story the details were still hazy. "I don't know exactly what happened. But I intend to find out," he told us, frustrated, determined, relentless.

Michael smiles at me—it's funny because his face is usually all pinched up from scowling. I smile back at him. I was there when he returned, limping and grim, looking like he'd almost caught hold of something worth keeping. It's the hardest thing, seeing a glimpse of mortal life, but with all these half-blood things edging in from the corners. You never realize you'd take the chance to leave until it's set right in front of you. To run, to run every time. To be erased, to disappear. Michael's smile might be bold and confident but I see what it's done to him.

Then his eyes sweep over me to Thalia, standing at my right. And the weirdest thing happens. It's like the air is sucked out of everything, something ancient tingling creepily down my spine, and when I move my foot forward it makes the loudest sound. Like the crashing of glass. The picture zooms dizzily like spilling over the edge in a roller coaster and I'm watching their pixilated forms frozen from a million miles away. It's slow and fast in the same moment. Impossible and overused. I've never felt so small.

It breaks and our feet move again, carrying us past the hitch, the link.

Thalia keeps talking to me like nothing's happened, even though her eyes narrow and her fingers clench. Michael walks past us, but I see his hands shake just slightly. A denied fact.

I wonder if, when Kronos was scattered, his power to control time flew out into all of us, everyone who had fought. And if electricity, some kind of thin connection, could bring that to life again. Send us spiraling out over the years.

A current no one could calculate. Patterns no one could place.

Every distance at the same time.

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_Well, that's it! (For those of you who might be wondering, the narrator of this chapter is just a kind of "everyman" half-blood, no one specific.) I hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading!_


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